INTERNAL CONTROL AND INTERNAL AUDIT

The author discusses some of the main positions in the debates about Madoff’s fraudulent financial scheme, his decades-long swindle, and the failure of operational risk management (the mechanism of the largest Ponzi scheme in history and its wide-felt impact on the global financial architecture). The main objective of this book is to explore and describe the role of financial globalization in the changing governance practices; effective corporate governance and financial market transparency; corporate governance effectiveness and quality of external audit; and director overlap, ethical financial reporting, and improvements in disclosure quality. The author is particularly interested in exploring patterns in the ethics of accounting; the societal impact of corporate risks; and the corporate governance causes of the international financial crisis. The theory that she seeks to elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on evaluating internal control deficiencies; identifying control deficiencies – an important component of management’s assessment; the political dynamics of corporate crime legislation; the imposition of criminal liability on corporate entities; and Internal Control Deficiency (ICD) disclosures prior to mandated internal control audits.

EQUALITY, SO BADLY MISUNDERSTOOD

The effort to make people equal in various important respects, e.g., wealth, health, education, burdens and advantages of all kinds, is the focus of criticism in this short work. I hold and argue that this effort is misguided, often very harmful and also frequently insidious, a guise for mischief by those who embark on the pursuit. The only valid form of equality pertains to people’s basic human individual rights—all who aren’t crucially incapacitated have these, so they are often called the equal rights of all persons. As regards politics and law this implies that no adult may be treated with special favor or disfavor by the legal authorities, whether in court or via public policy. Since the job of politics is to protect the equal rights of human individuals, everyone is equal under the law. But that’s the end of it, politically. Fairness is not a political good but one that has a role in various social contexts, such as family, teams, clubs, sport, beauty contests, and so forth. And fairness comes into play, other than in these areas, only when people voluntarily join some organization where they expect to be treated as all others who belong. Why so much fuss about equality and fairness? Some of the reasons have to do with the history of politics wherein kings and other rulers were expected to treat their subjects similarly, without favor to some of them and disfavor to others. And there is the tendency to extrapolate from family life, where parents are supposed to be fair to their children. Also, when teachers grade members of their classes, there is an implicit or explicit promise to do so unbiased, without special treatment of any (other than where justified, as when a student suffers from some impediment). But none of these imply or support the policies of egalitarianism. These and related topics comprise the content of this short volume and all egalitarians are invited to reflect on what is discussed here. In the tradition of classical political philosophy, this is not a technical, jargon-laden work, so any citizens can read it and gain food for thought.

The author discusses some of the main positions in the debates about the experience of listening to music, and the dynamics and coherence of musically‐evoked emotion. The main objective of this book is to explore and describe the uniqueness of the musical listening experience (listening to the dynamics of musical structure and the nature of the experiences of the elements of music); the dynamic quality of emotional response to music and the exploitation of music’s powers to facilitate social interaction; and the fundamental nature of emotional response to music. The author is particularly interested in exploring patterns in the musical evocation of emotion, aesthetical perspectives of musical meaning, and the dynamical process of listening to music’s phenomenal developments. The theory that he seeks to elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on music’s efficacy in influencing the affective states of listeners, and on linguistic descriptions of music in terms of emotion.

4th World Congress on the Advancement of Scholarly Research in Science, Economics, Law, and Culture

This volume is a direct offshoot of the 4th World Congress on the Advancement of Scholarly
Research in Science, Economics, Law, and Culture, June 3–6, 2010, held at the Advancement
of Scholarly Research Center, New York.

Proceedings of the 3rd World Congress on the Advancement of Scholarly Research in Science, Economics

This volume is a direct offshoot of the 3rd World Congress on the Advancement of Scholarly
Research in Science, Economics, Law, and Culture, August 25–29, 2009, held at the
Advancement of Scholarly Research Center, New York.